On Earth Day 2015, Green Party of Alberta Leader, Janet Keeping, calls for adoption of an Environmental Bill of Rights for Alberta. According to Keeping, “An Environmental Bill of Rights for Albertans is long, long overdue. Alberta’s ecosystems and wildlife habitat have been nickle-and-dimed nearly to death. It’s time Albertans had stronger legal tools to protect the environment.”

Greens would adopt an Environmental Bill of Rights to confer substantive rights – such as the right to a safe, healthy and unimpaired environment – and would impose a duty on the minister of the environment to protect these rights. It would also confer procedural rights, such as the right to environmental information and the right to go to court to enforce all these rights.

An Environmental Bill of Rights could be used to prevent measures that are difficult to oppose in any other way, such as the sale by the government of energy leases to endangered caribou habitat;

This Bill of Rights would not have constitutional status – at least not initially – but would, like the Alberta Human Rights Act, have priority over all other provincial legislation.

For the rest of the Green Party of Alberta platform go to http://greenpartyofalberta.ca/platform/